Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised on Sunday that Iran would deliver “an unforgettable response” to any “improper actions” from the United States over an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

The ayatollah appeared to be responding to an American campaign to further isolate and pressure Iran, an effort that received a push on Sunday with reports that President Obama is pressing United Nations nuclear inspectors to release classified data showing that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

The United States accused Iranian officials last week of plotting to murder the ambassador in a bizarre scheme involving an Iranian-American used car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million. Two men — the Iranian-American,Mansour J. Arbabsiar, and an officer in the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — have been charged in the plot.

Iran’s leaders have called the case a fabrication meant to distract Americans from their own problems, and The Associated Press reported Sunday that Iranian state TV had said that Iran’s Foreign Ministry requested consular access to Mr. Arbabsiar.

Norbert Bärlocher, a spokesman for the Swiss Embassy in Washington, said the embassy had no knowledge of whether the Iranians had passed such a request to the Swiss government. He said, “We represent the U.S. in Iran, but we do not represent Iran in the U.S.”

Asked if she knew of any request to see Mr. Arbabsiar, his lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, said, “I have no such knowledge.”

The supreme leader’s comments on Sunday were his strongest yet about the case.

“If any American officials entertain delusions, they should know that any improper action, whether political or security related, will meet a decisive response from the Iranian nation,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, while speaking to university professors and students in Kermanshah Province in western Iran.

The ayatollah said that the United States was using the accusations to divert attention from its financial problems, suggesting that the protests over economic injustice sweeping the globe were an embarrassment to Washington. He said that “the people of at least 80 nations have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement, and this is very bitter and difficult for American officials to accept.”

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also weighed in on Sunday, saying the alleged plot is just another of Washington’s “scenarios.” The semiofficial Press TV reported Mr. Ahmadinejad as saying that the United States makes “daily efforts to conceive scenarios against Iran. And, in this instance, it accused Iran of terrorism, but it should be clarified for the Americans that terror is the work of those that have no culture.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, according to Mehr News and IRNA, semiofficial news agencies, also issued a veiled threat to Mr. Ahmadinejad not to overstep his boundaries, addressing a power struggle between the two that has been going on most of this year. The ayatollah said, “Changing Iran into a parliamentary system from a presidential system” someday would not be a problem.

The news agencies focused on this comment. The implication, analysts said, was that Ayatollah Khamenei, the nation’s ultimate authority, was warning Mr. Ahmadinejad that he could abolish the presidency in the future.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/world/middleeast/iran-warns-america-against-trying-to-pressure-it.html?_r=1&src=tp

This Middle East power struggle could kill off the Arab spring by David Hearst: Guardian UK

The Iran 'terror plot' drama involves four players who have much to lose from Arab self-determination. Let's hope they fail

The drama of the Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington features four players who, whatever the substance of the allegations, are engaged in a series of proxy battles for control of their interests in the Middle East, a great game if you will. Three of the four – Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel – are struggling to contain and deflect the tidal wave of democratic protest known as the Arab spring. While mouthing support for it, each have genuine reason to fear Arab self-determination. The fourth, Iran, sees in the same events a challenge to its stewardship of the Shias and the loss of the regional influence it was unexpectedly handed when the US invaded Iraq.

Between them, they could kill off the Arab spring, just as its first fragile shoots are beginning to poke through. In Egypt, registration opened this week for candidates for the first election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Tunisia will hold its first election in 10 days. Its current foreign minister, Mouldi Kefi, said Tunisia's election would be a bellwether for the region. But it must be sounding more like the bell for the final round of Arab absolute monarchies.

Let's start with the House of Saud. That the horror film of street protest is soon to play in cinemas near them, the ageing and feuding princes can now have little doubt. The Sunni regime tried to stop the rot of revolt by the Shia majority in neighbouring Bahrain by sending in troops, but the revolt has migrated over the bridge that separates the two kingdoms to the eastern, predominantly Shia, city of al-Qatif, where there were armed clashes on Sunday between police and protesters after two elderly men were arrested to pressure their sons to surrender to police.

Just as important is the evidence of Sunni dissatisfaction with one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world. The government denies holding political prisoners, but admits to arresting around 5,700 "military extremists". Human rights organisations put the real figure of political detainees much higher. These include peaceful opponents of the regime such as Dr Saud Al Hashimi, or Mohammed Saleh Albejadi, the co-founder of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association.

Dissatisfaction is being voiced more openly in Riyadh and Jeddah. The independent religious leader Sheikh Salman Aloda, who expressed support for the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia on his popular weekly programme on a Saudi-owned TV channel, has been taken off the air and banned from leaving the country. The Saudi kingdom needs a script to quell unrest. The interior ministry blamed an unnamed foreign country for the unrest in al-Qatif – which in the Gulf is a coded reference to Iran.

The kingdom's closest ally, the US, also needs a new way of re-establishing itself in a region so central to its interests. Once the power behind many thrones, it finds itself in the unusual position of bystander to events rather than their shaper. Its stated support for Arab democracy is riven with inconsistencies. It has gone seamlessly from supporting Mubarak and Tunisia's former president, Ben Ali, to supporting their ousters, without even trying to explain its relationship to these dictators or account for the services they provided.

Barack Obama has instead tried to wrap the Arab spring into a narrative of his own aspirations. This is not destined to have a long shelf life. US allies who are expendable in Tunisia and Egypt are not in Bahrain. Still less would they be in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Palestine if that rose up against occupation. Let the Arab spring continue, and core US oil and military interests would be affected. The gap between stated policy and national interest will go from being latent to something that has to be bridged. What better way to do that than a conflict with Iran?

It is evident that Israel thinks its date with destiny is not with the Palestinians but with Iran's as yet untamed nuclear programme.Apologising to Egypt for deaths of Egyptian soldiers in hot pursuit of attackers in Eilat, and reaching a deal with Hamas over Gilad Shalit, can be interpreted in many ways. But one of them is clearing the tables in preparation for an attack on Iran.

The street battles in Syria between government forces and opposition forces are a major threat to Iran. If it lost Syria, it would lose not just its closest ally, but the conduit of arms, missiles and money to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, whose external leadership is in Damascus. Hamas avoided the strategic error that Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrallah made when he urged Arabs to end the unrest in Syria. But Hamas's external leadership may well have to find a new home as a result of staying on the fence. The biggest deterrent card that Iran has left to play is Iraq, a country that US troops are intent on leaving, and whose rulers have announced their support for Syria's Bashar Assad.

The final part of a bleak jigsaw is time. There is only a limited window of opportunity for readjusting the furniture in the region before Egypt forms a government and begins to play once again a seminal role. The options being mulled now may not be available in a year's time. Let us hope they never are.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/13/middle-east-arab-spring-saudi-ambassador